A Noxious Incident

Recently our dog Miguel had a MAJOR diarrheal incident in my car.

It occurred as we drove to Queen Anne Avenue, one of his favorite places to walk. It has 2 pet stores he likes to explore, and he always makes me stop at his veterinarian’s office, the Queen Anne Animal Clinic for some treats.

He also likes to read all the pee-mail on the trees that line the street.

Image from howtoshopforfree.net.

Miguel tore a ligament in his hind leg last August, so he can no longer walk there from our house. Now I drive him there once a week.

As we drove, I suddenly smelt a stench so horrific my eyes burned and my gag reflex fully engaged.

During this fetid bombardment on my senses I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw Miguel finishing his deposit of a huge pile of diarrhea in the back of the car.

I quickly pulled over to clean up the mess, but as most dog owners know, picking up diarrhea with poop bags is akin to driving on I-5 without getting stuck behind someone who refuses to drive above the speed limit.

It just can’t be done.

Of course, Miguel still expected his walk, so I drove him up to Queen Anne Avenue with my head out the window.

Once we got home I went to see what we had to clean up the mess  We usually have a bottle of some high-priced product that claimed to clean and eliminate pet odors from urine and feces, but I couldn’t find it.

Fortunately, I did find a bottle of Simple Green All-Purpose Cleaner.

Simple Green Successfully Cleans My Car

We’ve used Simple Green to clean around the house, but I never noticed its label said it eliminates pet odors and cleans pet stains, so I gave it a try.

After filling a bucket with one part water and one part Simple Green, I went to work. A couple of rolls of paper towels and a half hour of scrubbing later, the mess was gone.

But as I’ve learned from past experiences (mainly with cat urine smell in the basement carpet), cleaning up an accident doesn’t mean the pet odor is gone.

I couldn’t tell if Simple Green eliminated the smell because I had marinated in it for so long, so I decided to keep the windows open to air out the car and check the smell the next day.

Since this is Seattle, it began to rain after I finished, so I had to close the windows.

When the rain stopped the following day, I reluctantly went to my car assuming that the smell hadn’t dissipated.

But when I sat down and inhaled I smelled………nothing. Nothing!

Furthermore, Simple Green cleaned the mess so well I found no stains from Miguel’s accident.

Simple Green is Non-Toxic and Biodegradable

Simple Green products are also safe for both the environment and pets because they are non-toxic and biodegradable.

Clean Conscience, Dog Friendly Magazine, and Green Cleaning Magazine endorsed Simple Green as an environmentally friendly product. And the Simple Green All-Purpose Cleaner earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Safer Choice certification.

All Simple Green products contain no bleach, chlorine, formaldehyde, phosphates, or petroleum distillates. They also don’t leave behind any residue or harsh chemicals.

If ingested, Simple Green products can cause stomach upset and/or diarrhea in dogs; but unlike cleaners with toxic chemicals, they don’t cause any permanent damage.

As you can tell, I’m a huge Simple Green fan. I highly recommend it as a pet odor eliminator and pet stain remover.

While Simple Green makes several non-toxic and biodegradable cleaning products, including some that are made specifically for dog stains and odors, this review is only for Simple Green All-Purpose Cleaner.

Seattle DogSpot was not paid for this review. We do not take money in exchange for product reviews. 

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Frank Greif Photography Captures Dog/Humane Relationship

I first saw Frank Greif Photography on the walls of dog friendly Bustle Caffe in Queen Anne.

I’ve seen tons of pictures of people and their dogs, but Frank’s pictures were a little different. They all featured people and their dogs in virtually the same pose – each person held their dog as both of them looked into the camera – no smiles, both looking serious.

Some people stood as they held their dogs. Others held their dogs on their shoulders or around their necks like a scarf. Giant dogs too big to hold sat in their person’s lap.

Photo from Seattle DogSpot.

Although I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, something about the pictures grabbed me. My wife had a similar reaction and, as usual, she articulates it more clearly than I can:

“I went for my usual cup of coffee and was stopped in my tracks by his gallery of unique, soulful portraits of owners and their dogs. Not your usual cute, playful doggy shots. These express the love, devotion, and relationship between a dog and his/her person. I knew I wanted this, and I immediately called him to schedule a photography session. The result was your anniversary gift from me — some of the best shots ever of you and your dogs.”

Photos Show Human’s Love for Their Dogs

Frank’s interest in photographing people with their dogs began after he began taking “semi-spontanious photographs of people” as he walked around Seattle. Here he explains to me how his photography evolved:

“As that work progressed I became intrigued by the love humans show for their dogs, and the way dogs respond in kind. Then I started photographing that connection by simply waiting on the street until an interesting person with an interesting dog passed by and asking if I could make a photograph. Almost everyone says yes! I try to keep it simple, just the dog and the human – or is it the human and the dog? I have titled the work “Me and My Best Friend.” It’s up to the viewer to decide which is “me” and which is the “best friend.”

We absolutely love the pictures Frank took of us and our dogs. If you’re interested in having him photograph you and your dog, contact him through his website.

Disclosure: Neither me nor anyone else connected to Seattle DogSpot received any compensation or discount in exchange for this review. I only review products and services I purchase. I don’t take any money, product giveaways, or services for my reviews.

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There’s No Need to Fear, Underdogs are Here!

“Why don’t you get a service dog?”

Usually people don’t recognize a seminal point in their lives when it occurs. Karen Shirk certainly didn’t.

But when Alice, her personal care attendant at a residence for people with disabilities, spoke this simple sentence to her, it nudged Karen’s life into a completely different direction which in turn transformed the lives of hundreds of disabled children and their parents.

With compassion, wit, and insight, author Melissa Fay Greene documents some of these transformations in her new book, The Underdogs.

Image from The Underdogs Facebook page.

Shirk has a rare neuromuscular disease called myasthenia gravis (MG).  It had weakened her muscles to the point where daily tasks felt insurmountable.

Af she decided to get a service dog, she learned agencies wouldn’t place mobility dogs with respiratory-dependent people.

Undeterred, she got a dog herself and found a trainer to help her teach him to be a service dog.

Not wanting others to have similar problems finding a service dogs, she started the nonprofit 4 Paws for Ability to train rescued shelter dogs to place with kids suffering from severe disabilities.

Book Examines Impacts on Parents and Disabled Kids

Throughout the book, Greene combines Shirk’s story with unflinching accounts of how her service dogs broke down the walls around disabled kids and helped them take a more active role in the world around them.

But Greene makes the book even more compelling by examining the impact these dogs have on the parents of disabled kids.

For the first time in years, they can go on family walks. Or can take their kids with them on simple errands.. They can sleep through the night, some for the first time in years. They are no longer burdened trying to anticipate their child’s next tantrum.

One of the best examples of this is Greene’s description of a father with his daughter at a basketball game. The girl had severe anxiety and a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which triggered several raging tantrums a day.

But not long after she got her dog, she agreed to go watch a basketball game. 

Here’s how Greene described it:

“The look on James’ face – a father seated at a basketball game beside his daughter and wife, with a good yellow dog at his feet – was neither pained nor brave; he looked more than happy; he looked wistfully happy, immersed in the event, while keenly aware that it was the kind of everyday happy family moment he’d thought that elude them forever.”

The stress of dealing with a disabled child can be crushing for any parent. Greene illustrates how theses dogs are like pressure valves;  they relieve their stress and gives them something they weren’t sure they would ever have – a happy child.

By weaving together the stories of these families and Karen Shirk and sprinkling in some science about dog behavior and the human brain, Greene has written an exceptional book that provides a thorough and entertaining examination of the complex relationship between disabled kids, their parents, and their service dogs.

You can purchase The Underdogs from Amazon, Indie Bound, and Barnes and Noble.

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I know what you’re thinking: “Great, another dog book by a veterinarian.” I hear you. I have a stack of dog books by veterinarians gathering dust with a mental post-it note on top saying “started to read, couldn’t finish, give to library.”

But when I heard that San Diego area veterinarian Dr. Jessica Voglesang was writing a book about her life as a veterinarian I immediately preordered a copy long before it was published.

That’s because I’ve been a huge fan of her writing since I began following her blog post on her website Pawcurious several years ago. Combining her veterinary experience with humor and rapier wit, Dr. V slices through the conventional thinking of the veterinary world and offers a fresh perspective regarding many of its sacred cows while also revealing honest, unvarnished stories of her experiences as a small animal vet.

All Dogs Go to Kevin: Everything Three Dogs Taught Me (That I didn’t Learn in Veterinary School) follows Dr. V as she decides to be a veterinarian, plows her way through the veterinary school at the University of California Davis, searches for a job, adopts dogs, finds a job at a small veterinary practice, gets married, and has kids.

Image from Pawcurious.

In addition, she weaves in a number of personal stories that reveal the challenges she faced not only as vet, but also as a daughter, wife, and mother who dealt with many of the same obstacles we all face in our own lives.

And she does it with a funny, insightful, witty, and unflinchingly honest writing style that made it difficult for me to put the book down and caused me to laugh out loud more than once.

For example, the title of the book came from her clumsy attempt to tell her children that she had to put down their Golden Retriever Emmett. When she tried to tell them that Emmett went to heaven, her son thought she said he went to Kevin, which was understandable since their dad had a close friend named Kevin who lived nearby.

Struggling to clarify this misunderstanding, Dr. V told him that invisible angels took Emmett up to a place in the sky and he would never come back. Dr. V admits that her clumsy attempt to explain death to her son didn’t exactly work because he “spent next 3 months panicking every time he had a sniffle” and “jumped at every small noise, convinced an invisible angel was about to drag him off into the hereafter with unseen hands.”

Dr. V also gives us the inside scoop on some the less glamorous aspects of practicing veterinary medicine like:

• showing up at a fancy event with a noodle in her hair because a dog barfed up chicken noodle soup on her earlier that day
• listening to a woman berate her after performing her first spay surgery for not giving her dog a “bikini line incision”
• watching a woman’s dog poop out “a small purple G-string” that belonged to another woman her boyfriend had seen on the side
• giving a discount for an examination and dog food to a “widower” who told her he watched his wife die when she feel down a staircase in her wheelchair, only to see his wife waiting in his car after he left

But while Dr. V. provides plenty of funny anecdotes in her book, she also shares stories that will have you searching for the nearest box of Kleenex. Like the time she had to secretly clean a rug in their new house daily because their recently adopted dog Kekoa started peeing on because her husband didn’t tolerate any bad smells in the house.

She later discovered he was fully aware of the peeing problem and began cleaning up the rug after her because she did a “terrible job.” Turns out he tolerated the dog pee because Kekoa slept in their young daughter’s room to keep her from having nightmares.

The cherry on the top of this ice cream sundae of a book is Dr. V’s engaging, polished writing style. As the book reviewer for USA Today noted, “So descriptive and wonderfully unaffected is Vogelsang’s writing style, one imagines even her case notes would be interesting reads.”

You can get All Dogs Go to Kevin on Amazon. If you like the book as much as I did, you can also read Dr. V’s blog on her website Pawcurious.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a stack of books to take to the library.

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(Here’s another updated post from our former website. Seattle DogSpot received no product or monetary compensation for this post.)

If you’re looking for a durable, good-looking leash for your dog that’s made of recycled materials and is made not just in the USA, but in Seattle by a family-owned business, I’ve found the leash for you: Krebs Recycle Climbing Rope Leashes.

Krebs 6 ft. Reggie Leash. Photo from Krebs.com.

This leash is made from pre- and post-consumer climbing rope, but it isn’t recycled in the traditional sense where something (like paper) is broken down and then remade.

Krebs simply takes climbing rope that would end up in landfills – pieces that are too small or rope that has been retired – and makes it into leashes.

I didn’t realize that climbing rope needs to be retired regularly for safety reasons after several months in a gym or a season of climbing with guide services, and with the increasing popularity of climbing, Krebs is keeping a lot of rope out of landfills.

During its production process Krebs does end up with some pieces of rope that can’t be used, but instead of tossing them away, Krebs sends them to a secondary recycler that can re-process the rope for commercial uses such as furniture stuffing.

The company also takes recycled Cordura cloth from Tom Bihn, a Seattle baggage manufacturer to bind the loops on each end of its leashes.

Krebs uses industrial-strength stitching done inspired by safety rescue equipment and claims that its stitching has never failed. Krebs developed the leash when their chocolate lab Reggie was a puppy. Their first leash was a piece of climbing rope with a hook on one end and a handle on the other.

Krebs makes four leashes in the garage of their family home in Seattle:

Krebs 4 ft. Ruby Leash. Photo from Krebs.com.

• The 1-foot Training Leash – $15.95
• The 2-foot Heeler Leash – $16.95
• The 4-foot Ruby Leash – $18.50
• The 6-foot Reggie Leash – $19.50

We have 3 leashes from Krebs, and they are definitely the toughest, well-constructed leashes I’ve ever seen. This isn’t surprising since no one makes weak climbing rope (no one that wants to stay in business, anyway).

I imagine our Krebs leashes will last for many years.

Buying a Krebs leash is a win-win-win-win. You get a great product, made in Seattle, by a family business, that preaches and practices environmental sustainability. 

More importantly, the colors are really cool.

Here are the places you can buy Krebs leashes in Washington.

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